Chapter 3: Poverty as a Challenge

Minimum Learning Programme

Class 9

Introduction:

 In our daily life, we come across many people who we think are poor.
 They could be landless labourers in villages or people living in overcrowded jhuggis in
cities.
 They could be daily wage workers at construction sites or child workers in dhabas.

Issues are related to poverty:

Landlessness, Unemployment, Size of families, Illiteracy, Poor health/malnutrition, Child

labour, Helplessness.

Poverty as seen by social scientists:

 Since poverty has many facets, social scientists look at it through a variety of
indicators.
 Usually the indicators used relate to the levels of income and consumption.
 But now poverty is looked through other social indicators like illiteracy level, lack of
general resistance due to malnutrition, lack of access to healthcare, lack of job
opportunities, lack of access to safe drinking water, sanitation etc.
 Analysis of poverty based on social exclusion and vulnerability is now becoming very
common.

Social exclusion:

 According to this concept, poverty must be seen in terms of the poor having to
live only in a poor surrounding with other poor people, excluded from enjoying
social equality of better -off people in better surroundings.
 Social exclusion can be both a cause as well as a consequence of poverty in the
usual sense.
 Broadly, it is a process through which individuals or groups are excluded from
facilities, benefits and opportunities that others (their “betters”) enjoy.

Vulnerability:

 Vulnerability to poverty is a measure, which describes the greater probability of

certain communities (say, members of a backward caste) or individuals (such as a
widow or a physically handicapped person) of becoming, or remaining, poor in the
coming years.
  Vulnerability is determined by the options available to different communities for
finding an alternative living in terms of assets, education, health and job
opportunities.
 Further, it is analysed on the basis of the greater risks these groups face at the time
of natural disasters (earthquakes, tsunami), terrorism etc.
 In fact, vulnerability describes the greater probability of being more adversely
affected than other people when bad time comes for everybody, whether a flood or
an earthquake or simply a fall in the availability of jobs.

Poverty Line:

 A common method used to measure poverty is based on the income or consumption

levels.
 A person is considered poor if his or her income or consumption level falls below a
given “minimum level” necessary to fulfill basic needs.
 What is necessary to satisfy basic needs is different at different times and in
different countries.
 Therefore, poverty line may vary with time and place.
 Each country uses an imaginary line that is considered appropriate for its existing
level of development and its accepted minimum social norms.
 While determining the poverty line in India, a minimum level of food requirement,
clothing, footwear, fuel and light, educational and medical requirement etc. are
determined for subsistence.
 The accepted average calorie requirement in India is 2400 calories per person per
day in rural areas and 2100 calories per person per day in urban areas.
 World Bank use a uniform standard for the poverty line: minimum availability of the
equivalent of $1 per person per day.

Poverty Estimates:

 There is substantial decline in poverty ratios in India from about 55 per cent in 1973
to 36 per cent in 1993.
 The proportion of people below poverty line further came down to about 26 per
cent in 2000.
 If the trend continues, people below poverty line may come down to less than 20
per cent in the next few years.
 Although the percentage of people living under poverty declined in the earlier two
decades (1973– 1993), the number of poor remained stable around 320 million for a
fairly long period.
 The latest estimates indicate a significant reduction in the number of poor to about
260 million.
Vulnerable Groups:

 Social groups which are most vulnerable to poverty are scheduled caste and
scheduled tribe households.
 Among the economic groups, the most vulnerable groups are the rural agricultural
labour households and the urban casual labour households.
 51 out of 100 people belonging to scheduled tribes are not able to meet their basic
needs.
 50 per cent of casual workers in urban areas are below poverty line.
 About 50 per cent of landless agricultural workers and 43 per cent of scheduled
castes are also poor.
 Apart from these social groups, there is also inequality of incomes within a family.
 In poor families all suffer, but some suffer more than others.
 Women, elderly people and female infants are systematically denied equal access to
resources available to the family.
 Therefore women, children (especially the girl child) and old people are poorest of
the poor.

Inter-State Disparities:

 Recent estimates show that in 20 states and union territories, the poverty ratio
is less than the national average.
 On the other hand, poverty is still a serious problem in Orissa, Bihar, Assam,
Tripura and Uttar Pradesh. Orissa and Bihar continue to be the two poorest
states with poverty ratios of 47 and 43 per cent respectively. Along with rural
poverty urban poverty is also high in Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Uttar
Pradesh.
 In comparison, there has been a significant decline in poverty in Kerala, Jammu
and Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh, TamilNadu, Gujarat and West Bengal. States like
Punjab and Haryana have traditionally succeeded in reducing poverty with the
help of high agricultural growth rates. Kerala has focused more on human
resource development. In West Bengal, land reform measures have helped in
reducing poverty. In Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu public distribution of food
grains could have been responsible for the improvement.

Global Poverty Scenario:

 The proportion of people in developing countries living in extreme economic

poverty— defined by the World Bank as living on less than $1 per day—has fallen
from 28 per cent in 1990 to 21 per cent in 2001.
 Poverty declined substantially in China and Southeast Asian countries as a result of
rapid economic growth and massive investments in human resource development.
  In the countries of South Asia (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan)
the decline has not been as rapid.
 In Sub-Saharan Africa, poverty in fact rose from 41 per cent in 1981 to 46 per cent in
2001.
 The Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations calls for reducing the
proportion of people living on less than $1 a day to half the 1990 level by 2015.

Causes of Poverty:

 Less job opportunity & low growth rate of incomes.

 High growth rate of population.
 Huge income inequalities.
 Unequal distribution of land & other resources.
 Lack of proper implementation of policy Anti-Poverty Measures

Removal of poverty has been one of the major objectives of Indian developmental strategy.

The current anti-poverty strategy of the government is based broadly on two planks (1)
promotion of economic growth (2) targeted anti-poverty programmes. Although there are
so many schemes which are formulated to affect poverty directly or indirectly, some of
them are worth mentioning.